Jack and Elsebeth Smith when I first knew them. Jack and I were both post-docs in the Mathematical Physics Department at the University
of Adelaide. Earlier at the University of Edinburgh, Jack, under the supervision of Peter Higgs,
had written a Master's thesis,
Gauge Invariance in Quantum Electrodynamics (QED), whilst my ANU PhD thesis, developing new and
improved computational methods for evaluating Feynman diagrams in QED,
which bypassed the need to apply the mathematically dubious scheme called "renormalisation",
was entitled
Dispersion-Theoretic Approach to Graph theories of Charged Particles of Spin 0, 1/2, 1.
We had common interests, with one joint paper
dealing with decay modes of the eta (η)meson.
The Standard Model for elementary particles predicted
quarks, gluons, weak W and Z bosons, but needs needed the Higgs boson for completeness.
In particular, the Higgs is responsible for the mass of the other particles.
Jack Smith's contributions were an important part of the groundwork for this discovery, including his 2003 paper with V. Ravidran and W. van Neerven on the calculation of the "Higgs production"
cross section, a publication with over 500 citations.

A Tribute to Jack Smith
My Man in Stockholm 2013Jack Smith, Nobel Laureate (Physics) Peter Higgs, Elsebeth Smith, Stockholm 2013
Jack was invited by Peter Higgs to be a member of his party attending
the Nobel Prize award ceremony.
• Jack Smith had been Peter Higgs' very first research student
• Jack was coauthor of important papers, leading to the discovery of the Higgs boson using the CERN
Large Hadron Colllider
I especially note this paper:
V Ravindran, J Smith, WL Van Neerven, Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to differential
distributions of Higgs boson production in hadron–hadron collisions
Nuclear Physics B,Vol 634 (2002) pp 247–290.
John (Jack) Smith travelled to the 2013 Nobel Prize Award Ceremony
as the guest of Peter Higgs, who shared the 2013 Physics Prize with
François Englert
for
proposing what is known colloquially as the God particle, elsewise
as the "Higgs boson", discovered at CERN's Large Hadron Collider.

Victor Scheinman
my long-term friend
The inventor of the assembly line robot. His PUMA
Robot in the Smithsonian. What made this man ?

My Woman in Space

The only woman ionospheric physicist and the only Australian involved
in the design of US Air Force SatNav system later renamed GPS.

Elizabeth Essex-Cohen -- my future wife was in the
USAF Geophysical Research Lab 1974 playing a
vital role in GPS system design by applying known
ionosphere structure to check out putative orbits
for GPS satellites. But this GPS pioneer hit the glass ceiling at La Trobe University in 1983: forbidden by
her professor to supply me TEC data scans from
passes of orbiting beacon satellites for computation
in real-time of ionospheric tomography by methods
adapted from medical tomography. Late Career
highs as Program Chair for Conf. WARS 2000
(Wireless Applications of Radio Science)
and as
lead researcher and GPS research head for
FedSat Australian scientific satellite launched 2002.
Nevertheless a long career in
space science as
married woman
so unlike the experience of
Ruby Payne Scott also born in Grafton, NSW.